Page 58 of Trip Through Your Wires

The idea of Jake seeing other girls had crossed my mind, but the idea of him bringing a girl back to his room and not wanting the phone to interrupt whatever or whoever he was doing, drove me wild with jealousy. More so than seeing him with that redhead the night of the frat party. I may have shut the book on him and me, but I’d gotten used to having all his attention and didn’t like the way it felt to no longer have it.

“Have you made any friends yet?” she asks gently. “The girls are lovely once you get to know them.”

They may be lovely, but between the dancers and staff was a derision I didn’t understand. Dancers stayed backstage, staff up front, and neither group talked to the other. However, both appeared to be unified in one thing—their aversion to me.

The girl that cleaned my vomit the day I met with Richardson gives me dirty looks every chance that she can, and the dancers, while they smile and say hello, don’t really talk to me. I am an outside to both, so because neither knows what to think of me, they ignore me altogether.

It’s fine with me. I’m not here to make friends, and honestly, the fewer I talk to, the better. Less chance of anyone connecting the dots on where I’m from, or who I am. But it would be good to talk to a few of them and learn more about this place.

“The girls are fine,” I say with a shrug.

“Well,” she taps the railing, “when you start dancing, maybe all that money you make will put a smile on your face, hmm?”

“Money?” I look over at her.

“That is why you’re here, right?”

“Oh.” I tuck my hair behind one ear and nod. “Right.”

My first night here I’d made up a story that was as fake as my name. I was from Savannah where I’d run into Richardson while looking for a job and he’d suggested I apply to be a dancer at the club. It seemed plausible—a young girl so eager to make money that she took the first door that had been opened for her—and apparently Mamma believed it.

“Guess I wasn’t really thinking about it,” I admit.

“Not thinking about it?” She lets out a hearty laugh. “Well honey, think about it. Why do you think the others stay here, the benefits? Hell no. They do it for the money, doll.”

I’d been so focused on how angry and miserable I was here, that I never thought to ask what the dancers make.

“What’s their cut?” I ask, suddenly curious.

“Seventy percent goes to the house and thirty to the dancer.”

“Thirty percent?” I repeat, eyes wide.

“I got forty in my time,” she pats her head. “These ta-tas knew how to bring a man to his knees back then.”

She jiggles her boobs and I can’t help but laugh. “You worked here?”

“Sure did,” she grins. “That was before Richardson ran things. Back when love was free and this place served a different purpose.”

I nod, making a note of her response. Richardson hadn’t always run the club, which meant it either wasn’t part of Elmhurst, or had been but under someone else’s thumb. And she had worked here when love was free. Was she talking about the sixties? Peace, love, and all that shit.

Deciding to look into that another time, I file it away and ask another question. “What would you say an average night looks like for one of the girls?”

“Well, on a good month, the top dancers bring home one to two. Cherry is our most popular, so she pulls two consistently.”

“One or two hundred dollars on top of their wages?” My mouth falls open. “Really?”

“Oh heavens, no!” She waves the question away like it’s a bug from the swamp. “Who would dance for that? Thousand, sugar. One to two thousand.”

“Thousand?” I swallow. “Are you kidding?”

“Not at all,” she smiles proudly. “These girls use what God gave them and what Mamma taught them.”

Holy shit. As a cigarette girl I’d made nothing in tips. Come to think of it, I was making nothing working here, period. Well, that is if you count the evidence Richardson had that could send me and my friends to jail as nothing, which I didn’t. It was the whole reason I was here. But when it came to money, it was a zero sum game. I didn’t get a paycheck. I was earning my freedom.

But what if I could stash a little cash away while working to bring Richardson down? Enough money for one year of college, maybe even two? A silver lining in this shit storm, as my father would call it. Wouldn’t that be something?

“You want to give it a try?” Mamma asks with a curious smile.

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